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News for January 2010
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 27 January 2010 |
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| "Online Fundraising: You're Doing it Wrong!" Seminar Now Available On Demand |
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Sometimes the best way to stay on the path is to have clear warning signs that keep us from straying off of it. That's what we're aiming for with our new series of workshops with the "you're doing it wrong" subtitle. Our first such seminar - Online Fundraising: You're Doing it Wrong! - is now available on demand. Most of us have room for huge improvement in our online fundraising. Find out what your organization's biggest mistakes, and biggest opportunities, are by signing your team up for this one. Taking this workshop is a great way to instigate some renewal in your fundraising program, especially since (as with all our on-demand seminars), it comes with a personal consultation.
Posted: 1/27/10; 5:53:27 PM # |
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26 January 2010 |
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| Nominate an Organization for a Just Award! |
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Last week, we made public a new project called Just Awards, brought to you by Nonprofit Online News and Blue Avocado. With your help, Just Awards will be the IgNobel Prizes of the nonprofit sector. We aim to call a little bit of possibly unwanted attention to those parts of civil society that deserve it. We have recruited a stellar group of judges to make the final decision on these awards.
We are asking you to participate by submitting nominations for the two "Justies" we will award in 2010: one for most amazing example of narcissism by a U.S. philanthropic organization and another for most abominable coverage by a U.S. press organization. You can find much more information at the Just Awards website, including an online nomination form, instructions, bios of our judges, and so on. Please feel free to contact us via the website. And finally, this will only work if you're our eyes and ears. Tell us who deserves these awards. Put your own spin on this and spread the word.
Posted: 1/26/10; 5:01:08 PM # |
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21 January 2010 |
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| "Technology Planning: You're Doing it Wrong!" Seminar on Feb 17th |
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I've taught a lot of organizations and consultants how to do communication centered technology planning over the years and a certain lesson has dawned on me: Sometimes we just need to have our mistakes pointed out clearly. That's what we'll be doing with our new seminar, Technology Planning - You're Doing it Wrong!. It'll be delivered live online February 17, 2010. Among other things, we'll cover key warning signs, managerial causes of tech problems, numerous examples, and the costs of doing it wrong.
Posted: 1/21/10; 5:22:21 PM # |
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20 January 2010 |
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| How to Say Stupid Things About Social Media |
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People often criticize online social network sites like Facebook and Twitter for the wrong reasons and that can get us in trouble. They should be criticized for being closed and proprietary. They should be criticized for teaching people to give up their privacy. They should be criticized for how they are designed to make people obsess. But they should not be criticized for their banal content. We should all be so lucky as to build communication networks that inspire the sort of trivial communication that we all use for social bonding. Cory Doctorow explains all this in How to Say Stupid Things About Social Media.
Posted: 1/20/10; 4:46:03 PM # |
| The Challenge of Quality in Peer-Produced eLearning Content |
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Every nonprofit organization I've worked with in the last few years is interested in peer-produced content. And, with the exception of a few easy-going online enthusiasts, every one of them has a concern about the quality of that content. Many are considering using some measurement of popularity as a quality control method, but this has always struck me like measuring the sweetness of a drink by using a thermometer. It's easy and it's the tool we have handy, but it's marginally relevant, at best. To all of these organizations and to all the rest of you who are thinking the same thing, I recommend Ari-Matti Auvinen paper on The Challenge of Quality in Peer-Produced eLearning Content (11 page PDF). Although it focuses on the topic of online learning, its lessons - particularly its recommendation of the QualityScape method - are relevant to everyone.
Posted: 1/20/10; 4:24:29 PM # |
| Profiting From Haiti's Crisis |
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Plenty of people are writing about the nonprofit response to the post-earthquake crisis in Haiti, with its sad but essential focus on relief. I say "sad" because I haven't read much about nonprofit action related to changing the conditions that led to Haiti being the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere - and thus incredibly vulnerable to both suffering and exploitation in the wake of a disaster like this. And exploitation is well on its way. In Profiting From Haiti's Crisis, Benjamin Dangl tells us how US corporations, private mercenary groups, and the IMF are moving quickly to take advantage of the situation. This is classic "disaster capitalism" unfolding before our eyes, just like with Katrina. What is civil society's response?
Posted: 1/20/10; 4:09:00 PM # |
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7 January 2010 |
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6 January 2010 |
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| Five Ways to Build Trust - and Tipping Points for Choice |
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I'm teaching a seminar on list building next week. The emphasis in the seminar is two-fold: the use of new media and absolute integrity. Obviously, the key moment in a list building process is on the side of the stakeholder: the act of trust by that person in the moment of signing up. Although it's far from complete, I am pleased to share a few ideas from Anthony Cirillo: Five Ways to Build Trust - and Tipping Points for Choice. In brief, his five recommendations are: (1) Be transparent, (2) Collect information, (3) Monitor, (4) Create community (I would use the word "build", since we don't really create communities from nothing.), and (5) Adopt causes. His article is aimed at commercial readers, so it's not surprising that some of these (like the last two) will come easily to nonprofits.
Posted: 1/6/10; 5:53:33 PM # |
| Nonprofits and Journalism: An Interview with Mark Jurkowitz |
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I've treated journalism as part of civil society throughout my work in the last couple of decades. Not everyone has seen that as appropriate and I can understand their position. But that position is clearly changing. The continued financial failure of newspapers, along with the content failures of many mainstream media outlets (think Fox "News"), are making it very clear to everyone that new models - nonprofit or at least social enterprise models - are needed. The Nonprofit Quarterly's recent Interview with Mark Jurkowitz neatly captures the issues facing nonprofit organizations and news organizations, as they proceed on their (hopefully productive) collision course.
Posted: 1/6/10; 5:44:32 PM # |
| The Worst (and Best) Way to Pick A Charity This Year |
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I should have mentioned this when it was first announced back in December 2009, and recent commentary has reminded me to bring it to your attention now: In a news release entitled The Worst (and Best) Way to Pick A Charity This Year, a consortium of nonprofit information and transparency groups announced their official abandonment of the corrosive metric of overhead ratios as a measure of organizational effectiveness. It might seem obvious on the surface that effectiveness is about the amount of change made or service provided for the resources invested. But for a very long time now, most of these organizations have emphasized "overhead" as a key metric. It's like we've been living in the old joke about the man who knows he lost his glasses on the dark street somewhere, but is looking for them under the light of the streetlamp on the sidewalk, because that's where he can see. Congratulations to all these organizations for embracing the goal of looking in the right place, even if it's harder to do.
Posted: 1/6/10; 5:36:30 PM # |
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